TL;DR: AMC Part 1 exam preparation starts with the format. The AMC CAT MCQ exam is 150 single-best-answer questions in 3.5 hours, computer adaptive, scored 0 to 500 with 250 as the pass mark. The AMC Part 1 exam fees are AUD 2,920 a sitting, and AMC figures put the pass rate per attempt at roughly 47 to 60%, depending on the year. For many international medical graduates, the Australian context costs more marks than the medicine does. This guide covers the local guidelines, legal duties, screening rules and emergencies that trip IMGs up, each with a free worked case.
Free: every case in this guide is one of our 50 worked AMC Part 1 clinical cases. [Browse them all](https://amcacademic.com/cases) or [start 20 free questions](https://amcacademic.com/study). No account, no card.
If you've done any AMC exam preparation already, or even looked at an AMC preparation course, you'll know the standard advice: follow the blueprint, finish one question bank, sit your mocks. It's good advice, and our 12-week study plan and 3-month guide cover the scheduling side. This article is about the part schedules skip: what to study, and where doctors trained outside Australia drop marks they didn't expect to drop.
AMC Part 1 at a glance
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Official name | AMC Computer Adaptive Test (CAT) MCQ Examination, also called AMC Part 1, AMC exam Part 1, the AMC 1 exam or the AMC MCQ |
| Questions | 150, single best answer from five options |
| Time | 3.5 hours in one session, about 84 seconds a question |
| Format | Computer adaptive, with no skipping and no going back |
| Scoring | 0 to 500, pass at 250, no negative marking |
| 2026 change | Slightly higher pass standard from 2026, still reported as 250 |
| Where | Pearson VUE centres in Australia and other countries |
| Fee | AUD 2,920 per authorisation, valid 12 months to book a sitting |
| Results | 4 pm on the Friday three weeks after your exam event |
Sources: AMC CAT MCQ examination, MCQ Examination Specifications, AMC fees and charges, pass standard update. The AMC dropped its card payment surcharge from 1 October 2026; the fee itself didn't change. Our AMC exam fees guide has the full breakdown, including refunds, and AMC exam dates, booking and results lists the sittings from October 2026 to September 2027.
What is the AMC Part 1 pass rate?
The AMC doesn't publish an up-to-date pass rate on its MCQ page. Its 2024–25 annual report records 7,821 CAT MCQ examinations, up 23% on the year before, but no pass figure. The most-quoted recent number, attributed to the AMC's 2022–23 annual report, is about 47%: 2,119 passes from 4,468 candidates.
The longer view is kinder. AMC data published in the Medical Journal of Australia showed that across 2010 to 2019, about 57 to 60% of attempts passed, and about 82% of candidates passed eventually. Read it this way: plenty of attempts fail, but most people who keep going get there.
What the AMC blueprint weights
The AMC's MCQ Examination Specifications split the exam across six patient groups:
| Patient group | Share of the exam | Roughly this many of 150 questions | Free cases to start with |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adult health: Medicine | 30% | 45 | Acute ischaemic stroke, atrial fibrillation, iron deficiency in heart failure, Graves disease in pregnancy |
| Adult health: Surgery | 20% | 30 | Acute angle-closure glaucoma, adhesive small bowel obstruction |
| Women's health | 12.5% | 19 | Ruptured ectopic pregnancy, postpartum haemorrhage |
| Child health | 12.5% | 19 | Croup, intussusception |
| Mental health | 12.5% | 19 | Postoperative delirium, mania with thyrotoxicosis |
| Population health and ethics | 12.5% | 19 | Fitness to drive, Gillick competence, impaired colleague |
Each question is also tagged by clinician task: data gathering, data interpretation and synthesis, or management.
Medicine and Surgery make up half the paper, and most candidates rightly spend most of their time there. Two things still catch people out. The four smaller groups add up to the other half, and Population health and ethics on its own is worth about 19 questions, which is more than many candidates budget for. And in every group, many questions turn on Australian practice rather than universal medicine: which test comes first here, which drug is first line here, what the law asks of a doctor here. That's where the next section comes in.
The Australian topics that catch IMGs out
None of this is exotic. It's everyday Australian medicine that simply works differently from what many IMGs trained with. Each topic comes with a free worked case, so you can test yourself before you read.
1. Australia's own emergencies
Geography sets questions here that you won't meet in many other exams. Snake bite is the obvious one. First aid is a pressure immobilisation bandage, never a tourniquet, and systemic envenoming means intravenous antivenom without waiting for more tests. Practise it with the Australian snake bite case.
Distance is the other. Outside the cities, the nearest cath lab can be hours away, which turns STEMI management into a question about the clock. Work through the rural STEMI case.
2. The law and the doctor's duty
Australian doctors carry legal and professional duties, some of which differ by state, and the exam expects you to know what they mean in practice.
Mandatory reporting. Unexplained patterned bruising on a 4-year-old isn't a "discuss it with the family" question. Suspected non-accidental injury case
Fitness to drive. Assessing Fitness to Drive sets the medical standards, and commercial drivers face stricter ones. A doctor may report an unsafe driver who won't self-report, and in South Australia and the Northern Territory must. Commercial driver with hypoglycaemia case
Notifiable diseases. Meningococcal disease is notified to public health as soon as it's suspected, and close contacts need clearance antibiotics. Meningococcal notification case
Consent and capacity. A competent 16-year-old can consent to contraception and is owed confidentiality, and a capable adult can refuse life-saving surgery. Gillick competence case · Refusing life-saving surgery case
Notifying Ahpra. A colleague who is intoxicated before an operation is a mandatory notification, not a quiet word. Impaired colleague case
3. Screening and prevention rules
This is where it's easy to know the principle but not the Australian number.
Breast cancer screening with a family history. One relative diagnosed late in life, and a 42-year-old asking what she should do. Australian risk categories decide the answer.
Diagnosing type 2 diabetes from an incidental HbA1c. An asymptomatic man with an HbA1c of 6.7%. Diagnose now, or confirm first?
Gestational diabetes: postnatal testing and long-term risk. Diet-controlled GDM, baby delivered. When and how do you test, and what is her lifetime risk?
Small abdominal aortic aneurysm: surveillance. An incidental 3.8 cm aneurysm. How often do you scan, and when do you refer?
Iron deficiency anaemia in an older man. Iron deficiency and weight loss at 66. The must-do investigation is in the bowel.
4. Australian first-line choices
Management questions expect the Australian first-line answer, and for prescribing that usually means Therapeutic Guidelines.
Helicobacter pylori: test and treat in primary care. A young patient with uncomplicated dyspepsia. Which test comes first?
Uncomplicated diverticulitis. CT-confirmed, immunocompetent and well. Antibiotics or not?
Paracetamol overdose: timing the level. An early presentation with a 3-hour level. When the blood was taken decides what you do with the result.
Contraception with migraine with aura. She's asking for the pill. Which methods are safe for her, and which aren't?
Anti-D for threatened miscarriage before 12 weeks. RhD-negative, light bleeding at 10 weeks. Is anti-D needed?
5. Skin cancer country
Australia has one of the highest melanoma rates in the world, so pigmented lesions get serious attention. The suspected melanoma case asks the practical question: a changing lesion with ABCDE features in front of you, exactly how do you biopsy it?
Find your weak spots before the exam does. Take 20 free AMC Part 1 questions: every option explained the moment you answer, and your weakest topic named at the end. No account, no card. Create your free account afterwards and your answers carry over.
Study material for the AMC exam that's worth your time
You don't need a shelf of books. You need a few sources that match the exam, used hard. In rough order of priority:
AMC Academic's clinical cases and question bank. Start with the 50 free worked cases, then move to the full bank of more than 2,800 original AMC Part 1 questions, each with a worked explanation for every option. This is where most of your hours should go; here's what makes a good AMC question bank.
The AMC's own documents. The MCQ Examination Specifications for the blueprint and sample questions, and Australian Medicine in Context for the presentations and professional practice topics the AMC considers examinable. Its chapter on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health (Closing the Gap, the 715 health check, the social determinants of health) is essential reading. Both documents are free.
The Australian guidelines behind the answers. Therapeutic Guidelines for prescribing, RANZCOG for women's health, the Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne guidelines for child health, the Australian Immunisation Handbook, the Heart Foundation's acute coronary syndrome guidelines and the Australian Asthma Handbook. Look things up when a case or question sends you there; don't read them cover to cover.
What to leave out: big non-Australian reference textbooks for management questions (the AMC's own specifications advise care when revising from major reference texts), and raw recall papers with unchecked answer keys. Our guide to AMC recalls shows how to use recalled topics safely, with 18 free cases to practise on.
For a longer reading list, see our guide to the best books and study material for AMC Part 1.
A weekly routine built around cases
Questions train you to answer. Cases train you to reason. A simple week that uses both:
Monday to Saturday: 40 to 50 bank questions a day in your current patient group, plus one free case from the same group worked properly: 90 seconds cold, then every explanation.
One evening a week: an Australian-context session. Pick a topic from the list above, do the case, then open the guideline it cites and write down the one number or rule the question turned on. The snake bite and rural STEMI cases are good places to start.
Sunday: go through your error log and redo the week's misses cold. Then turn your study guide into questions: for each topic, write the question an examiner would ask and answer it out loud in two sentences. If you can't, it goes back on the list.
Final two weeks: full 150-question mocks under exam conditions, at the time of day your exam is booked.
The 12-week day-by-day plan puts all of this into a calendar, weighted by the blueprint.
AMC Part 1 exam preparation: FAQ
How long should I prepare for AMC Part 1?
Three months works for many candidates who can study 20 to 25 hours a week. If you can't, or you've been away from clinical practice for a while, plan on six months.
What is the pass mark for AMC Part 1?
250, on a scale of 0 to 500. It isn't a percentage: because the exam is adaptive, your score estimates your ability rather than counting correct answers. The AMC raised the underlying standard slightly for exams from 2026, but results are still reported against 250.
Is there negative marking in AMC Part 1?
No. Wrong answers aren't penalised, so answer every question. Leaving questions unanswered can mean a fail for insufficient data.
What are the AMC Part 1 exam fees?
AUD 2,920 for the MCQ authorisation, which is valid for 12 months to book a sitting. You'll also need an AMC portfolio, which costs AUD 642. Our step-by-step registration guide walks you through it, and our AMC exam fees guide covers every fee and the refund rules.
Can I sit AMC Part 1 outside Australia?
Yes. It runs at Pearson VUE test centres in Australia and other countries. Sanctions can restrict scheduling for residents of some countries, so check the AMC's MCQ page before you book.
What's the best study material for the AMC exam?
Start with AMC Academic's 50 free clinical cases, which cover the Australian-context topics above, then the full bank of more than 2,800 original AMC Part 1 questions. Back them up with the AMC's own Specifications and Australian Medicine in Context, and with the Australian guidelines behind the answers, starting with Therapeutic Guidelines.
Start your AMC Part 1 preparation today
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Work the plan with the full bank. More than 2,800 original AMC Part 1 questions mapped to the blueprint, timed mock exams, results by specialty and topic, Astra and IELTS Academic, from US$19 a month. Fixed terms, no auto-renewal and a 7-day money-back guarantee.
Still choosing a question bank? Read what makes a good AMC question bank. Looking for AMC recalls? Start with 18 free cases on recalled topics.
Disclaimer: AMC Academic is an independent educational platform and isn't affiliated with or endorsed by the Australian Medical Council. Our cases and questions are written by our own team as original material. They're based on commonly recalled exam topics, but we don't use, reproduce or distribute AMC examination material or recalled exam questions, and our content doesn't replicate or preview any actual exam. Read our full disclaimer.